Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro [105]
But as I say, I don’t want to paint too gloomy a view of that time at the Kingsfield. For a lot of it, especially after that day he asked me about his animals, there seemed to be no more shadows left from the past, and we really settled into each other’s com-pany. And though he never asked me again for advice about his pictures, he was happy to work on them in front of me, and we’d often spend our afternoons like that: me on the bed, maybe reading aloud; Tommy at the desk, drawing.
Perhaps we’d have been happy if things had stayed that way for a lot longer; if we could have whiled away more afternoons chatting, having sex, reading aloud and drawing. But with the summer drawing to an end, with Tommy getting stronger, and the possibility of notice for his fourth donation growing ever more distinct, we knew we couldn’t keep putting things off indefinitely.
IT HAD BEEN AN UNUSUALLY BUSY PERIOD FOR ME, and I’d not been to the Kingsfield for almost a week. I arrived in the morning that day, and I remember it was bucketing down. Tommy’s room was almost dark, and you could hear a gutter splashing away near his window. He’d been down to the main hall for breakfast with his fellow donors, but had come back up again and was now sitting on his bed, looking vacant, not doing anything. I came in exhausted—I’d not had a proper night’s sleep for ages—and just collapsed onto his narrow bed, pushing him against the wall. I lay like that for a few moments, and might easily have fallen asleep if Tommy hadn’t kept prodding my knees with a toe. Then finally I sat up beside him and said:
“I saw Madame yesterday, Tommy. I never spoke to her or anything. But I saw her.”
He looked at me, but stayed quiet.
“I saw her come up the street and go into her house. Ruth got it right. The right address, right door, everything.”
Then I described to him how the previous day, since I was down on the south coast anyway, I’d gone to Littlehampton in the late afternoon, and just as I’d done the last two times, walked down that long street near the seafront, past rows of terraced houses with names like “Wavecrest” and “Sea View,” until I’d come to the public bench beside the phone box. And I’d sat down and waited—again, the way I’d done before—with my eyes fixed on the house over the street.
“It was just like detective stuff. The previous times, I’d sat there for over half an hour each go, and nothing, absolutely nothing. But something told me I’d be lucky this time.”
I’d been so tired, I’d nearly nodded off right there on the bench. But then I’d looked up and she was there, coming down the street towards me.
“It was really spooky,” I said, “because she looked exactly the same. Maybe her face was slightly older. But otherwise, there was no real difference. Same clothes even. That smart grey suit.”
“It couldn’t literally have been the same suit.”
“I don’t know. It looked like it was.”
“So you didn’t try and speak to her?”
“Of course not, stupid. Just one step at a time. She was never exactly nice to us, remember.”
I told him how she’d walked right past me on the opposite side, never glancing over to me; how for a second I thought she would also go past the door I’d been watching—that Ruth had got the wrong address. But Madame had turned sharply at the gate, covered the tiny front path in two or three steps and vanished inside.
After I’d finished, Tommy stayed quiet for some time. Then he said:
“You sure you won’t get into trouble? Always driving out to places you’re not supposed to be?”
“Why do you think I’m so tired? I’ve been working all kinds of hours to get everything in. But at least we’ve found her now.”
The rain kept splashing outside. Tommy turned onto his side and put his head on my shoulder.
“Ruth did well for us,” he said, softly. “She got it right.”
“Yeah, she did well. But now it’s up to us.”
“So what’s the plan, Kath? Have we got one?”
“We just go there. We just go there